Benghazi and the bureaucrats

It is desperation time for the Obama administration, its attempt to falsely characterize the 9/11 anniversary terror attack in Benghazi lying in ruins as burned out as the Benghazi consulate. The late American ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, is a martyr to the Obama administration's fantasyland approach to the "Arab Spring," pretending that it was a positive move toward democracy and Facebook-led modernization.

We now know that Stevens and others begged for more security in Libya, but that those requests were denied, apparently because the administration wished to present the image of a democratic Libya moving forward in a positive manner. Having enthusiastically backed the Arab Spring with force of arms in Libya, it would be highly embarrassing for Obama to admit that he had unleashed an Islamist whirlwind in Libya and Egypt.

Rosslyn Smith wrote yesterday before the Issa Committee hearing:

My first thought upon hearing that Ambassador Steven's requests for more security were ignored was that the state department bureaucracy will absolutely go ballistic. Considering how vicious career bureaucrats at State can be about policy differences with an administration I hate to think what they are capable of when the issue has become personal. Remember that Ambassador Stevens was one of them, a career diplomat, rather than an scholar, lawyer or consultant turned politician/diplomat. A very basic trust was violated by the political appointees in not protecting our own people sent into dangerous places. I suspect other agencies that send people abroad are also a roar. Career people at such agencies tend to operate on the assumption the government will always provide the best security available when they are overseas. Their families take comfort in that expectation when they are assigned abroad.

These are smart, well connected people who are highly skilled in the leaker game. Indeed, the State Department was already going rouge before the ink was fully dry on the Constitution. One of State's very first hires was assigned to dig up dirt on the rest of the people in George Washington's administration, particularly Alexander Hamilton.

Yet, in their testimony, two State Department careerists almost inexplicably protected their political bosses. John Podhoretz writes in the NY Post:

At yesterday's incendiary, four-hour hearing in Washington, congressional Republicans ripped into two high-ranking State Department officials who struggled to explain away the administration's utterly baffling behavior before and after the murder of four Americans in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

The spectacle was agonizing. The officials - Charlene Lamb and Patrick Kennedy - basically said everything they'd done before the terror assault and everything the administration had said afterward was appropriate, "based on what was known at the time."

Lamb and Kennedy said they'd done the right thing as they sat next to two security experts who'd been on the ground in Benghazi and had desperately sought more assistance from the State Department - as had Ambassador Chris Stevens, up to the very day he was murdered.

Based on what they knew at the time.

Even more surprising, Kennedy acknowledged that he believed the murders were the result of a terrorist plan, rather than the aftermath of a spontaneous uprising against a YouTube video. But he then heatedly said he would've done exactly what UN Ambassador Susan Rice did when she went on the Sunday-morning chat shows and falsely asserted that the video was entirely to blame - based on what was known at the time.

This looks like a stonewall. It will not work. It is an act of desperation. Too many people know too much and have too much at stake personally.

Speaking of desperation, Jay Carney has taken to denying he previous statements to the White House press corps. Buzzfeed highlights 2 videos demonstrating the trap Carney has laid for himself trying to protect the administration's lies.

10/10: "I never said, I never said we don't know if it's terrorism."

9/14 in response question if it was a terrorist attack: "We don't have and do not have concrete evidence to suggest this was not in reaction to the film."

Jay Tapper of ABC News, closed in on Carney, with the fatal question that throws back in OBama's face the snide wisecrack he made about Mitt Romney: "...didn't President Obama shoot first and aim later? ..."

This is not going to end well for the Obama forces. Michael Kinsley, who has been watching DC from the progressive camp for decades, today writes a prophetic column, " President (gulp) Romney?"

It is desperation time for the Obama administration, its attempt to falsely characterize the 9/11 anniversary terror attack in Benghazi lying in ruins as burned out as the Benghazi consulate. The late American ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, is a martyr to the Obama administration's fantasyland approach to the "Arab Spring," pretending that it was a positive move toward democracy and Facebook-led modernization.

We now know that Stevens and others begged for more security in Libya, but that those requests were denied, apparently because the administration wished to present the image of a democratic Libya moving forward in a positive manner. Having enthusiastically backed the Arab Spring with force of arms in Libya, it would be highly embarrassing for Obama to admit that he had unleashed an Islamist whirlwind in Libya and Egypt.

Rosslyn Smith wrote yesterday before the Issa Committee hearing:

My first thought upon hearing that Ambassador Steven's requests for more security were ignored was that the state department bureaucracy will absolutely go ballistic. Considering how vicious career bureaucrats at State can be about policy differences with an administration I hate to think what they are capable of when the issue has become personal. Remember that Ambassador Stevens was one of them, a career diplomat, rather than an scholar, lawyer or consultant turned politician/diplomat. A very basic trust was violated by the political appointees in not protecting our own people sent into dangerous places. I suspect other agencies that send people abroad are also a roar. Career people at such agencies tend to operate on the assumption the government will always provide the best security available when they are overseas. Their families take comfort in that expectation when they are assigned abroad.

These are smart, well connected people who are highly skilled in the leaker game. Indeed, the State Department was already going rouge before the ink was fully dry on the Constitution. One of State's very first hires was assigned to dig up dirt on the rest of the people in George Washington's administration, particularly Alexander Hamilton.

Yet, in their testimony, two State Department careerists almost inexplicably protected their political bosses. John Podhoretz writes in the NY Post:

At yesterday's incendiary, four-hour hearing in Washington, congressional Republicans ripped into two high-ranking State Department officials who struggled to explain away the administration's utterly baffling behavior before and after the murder of four Americans in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

The spectacle was agonizing. The officials - Charlene Lamb and Patrick Kennedy - basically said everything they'd done before the terror assault and everything the administration had said afterward was appropriate, "based on what was known at the time."

Lamb and Kennedy said they'd done the right thing as they sat next to two security experts who'd been on the ground in Benghazi and had desperately sought more assistance from the State Department - as had Ambassador Chris Stevens, up to the very day he was murdered.

Based on what they knew at the time.

Even more surprising, Kennedy acknowledged that he believed the murders were the result of a terrorist plan, rather than the aftermath of a spontaneous uprising against a YouTube video. But he then heatedly said he would've done exactly what UN Ambassador Susan Rice did when she went on the Sunday-morning chat shows and falsely asserted that the video was entirely to blame - based on what was known at the time.

This looks like a stonewall. It will not work. It is an act of desperation. Too many people know too much and have too much at stake personally.

Speaking of desperation, Jay Carney has taken to denying he previous statements to the White House press corps. Buzzfeed highlights 2 videos demonstrating the trap Carney has laid for himself trying to protect the administration's lies.

10/10: "I never said, I never said we don't know if it's terrorism."

9/14 in response question if it was a terrorist attack: "We don't have and do not have concrete evidence to suggest this was not in reaction to the film."

Jay Tapper of ABC News, closed in on Carney, with the fatal question that throws back in OBama's face the snide wisecrack he made about Mitt Romney: "...didn't President Obama shoot first and aim later? ..."

This is not going to end well for the Obama forces. Michael Kinsley, who has been watching DC from the progressive camp for decades, today writes a prophetic column, " President (gulp) Romney?"